


No Time For Speeches

by escritoireazul



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-22
Updated: 2005-05-22
Packaged: 2017-11-14 12:04:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escritoireazul/pseuds/escritoireazul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I’m so tired of speeches, tired of searching for words and phrases that come out all mixed up, entangled and meaningless."</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Time For Speeches

**Author's Note:**

> To thestalkycop, because I'll do anything you ask  
> Setting: Toward the end of season 7.

_It’s time for speeches_ , I think, and then wince. I’m so tired of speeches, tired of searching for words and phrases that come out all mixed up, entangled and meaningless. I’m probably more tired of giving speeches than any of the girls are of listening to them. Because they, at least, can tune me out and pretend that this is just some game and everything will be fine. That Faith is their new best friend and that she can keep them any safer than I can. And all I have left are my words and my experience, rumbled and faded and breaking away at the edges.

And Spike.

He’s not supposed to be one of the things that gets me through the nights. He’s the bad guy, except anyone, any _thing_ that isn’t the First can’t be much of a bad guy, and he’s been a bastard to me before, but sometimes, most times, it helps when he holds me.

These times, it helps a lot.

Tomorrow we’re going to storm the castle, the high school, the beginning and end of my problems here. My life turned so strange after we blew up this school, weird even for a Vampire Slayer and her friends. Not as odd as going back, though; they say you can never go back, but what if you have no other choice? What if you probably should have never left?

We’ve already lost so much, I’ve already lost so much, the love of my life, my mother, my parents, my normal life and the chance to grow up, to grow old, to have a family of my own.

But what is this group if not something like a family? Dysfunctional as hell, yeah, but still we care and we try. Maybe Willow is the kind aunt, and Giles is the wise old grandfather, and Xander everyone’s favorite uncle. And maybe I’m the abusive stepmother, but they’re alive, mostly, and they wouldn’t be if I hadn’t been so tough.

I guess that makes Spike the beloved father, but he’s not, and I didn’t take him away from them, like in the fairy stories. If anything he stole me, right out from under my careful guard, and I really shouldn’t forgive him that.

But when he’s in bed, and the nights are cool, and hey, the world’s about to end, again, and I don’t have anything else to say to anyone, much less the potential slayers who think Faith hung the moon and I’m out to get them, and he opens his arms to me….

Spike’s just about the closest thing to a knight on a white horse that I can picture, and I’m really quite content to lay down next to him, and curl up against his chest, and let him tell me he loves me. I hope he knows that I love him, too.

Even if I can’t quite say it, just yet.


End file.
